A marginal marine fauna from the upper Dinosaur Park Formation, Canada
Vertebrate Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology, University of Alberta
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open source
Gryposaurus notabilis
Gryposaurus notabilis was a large plant-eating duck-billed dinosaur (hadrosaurid) that reached roughly 8–9 metres in length and is estimated to have weighed between two and four tonnes. Its signature feature sat in the middle of its face: a tall, arched hump of nasal bone just in front of the eyes, giving the animal a distinctly Roman-nosed profile.
Gryposaurus
Gryposaurus notabilis
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Weight
2000–4000 kg
Length
8–9 m
Diet
Herbivore
Period
Cretaceous
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2000–4000 kg
8–9 m
Cretaceous
Both bipedal and quadrupedal
2.5–3.5 m
25 km/h
Herbivore
11 recorded fossil finds in Canada. First described in 1914 by Lambe.
Sites and counts from the Paleobiology Database
The timeline shows the whole age of dinosaurs – and how much time has passed since. The glowing part is when Gryposaurus lived.
million years ago
Lived 77–75 million years ago
If the whole age of dinosaurs were a single day, Gryposaurus lived at 22:43.
Chapter • Meet the dinosaur
Gryposaurus notabilis was a large plant-eating duck-billed dinosaur (hadrosaurid) that reached roughly 8–9 metres in length and is estimated to have weighed between two and four tonnes. Its signature feature sat in the middle of its face: a tall, arched hump of nasal bone just in front of the eyes, giving the animal a distinctly Roman-nosed profile. Otherwise it had the classic hadrosaurid build — a broad toothless beak at the front of the jaws, dental batteries of hundreds of tightly packed grinding teeth further back, powerful hind limbs, shorter forelimbs with hoof-like fingertips, and a long, deep tail carried horizontally clear of the ground. Skin impressions attributed to Gryposaurus preserve small pyramidal scales of several different sizes plus a row of taller conical structures running along the midline of the back. No feather-like structures are known in hadrosaurids.
Chapter • Where it lived
Gryposaurus notabilis lived roughly 77–75 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) in what is now southern Alberta, Canada. Its fossils come chiefly from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Dinosaur Provincial Park. The setting was a humid coastal lowland bordering the Western Interior Seaway, the shallow sea that split North America in two. Meandering rivers, lagoons, swamps and forests of conifers, ginkgoes, ferns and early flowering plants covered the plain. Its neighbours included the horned dinosaurs Centrosaurus and Chasmosaurus, crested hadrosaurids such as Corythosaurus and Parasaurolophus, the armoured Euoplocephalus and the tyrannosaurid predator Gorgosaurus. Closely related species of the same genus are known from the Two Medicine Formation of Montana and the Kaiparowits Formation of Utah, USA.
Chapter • Wild behavior
Cathemeral
Duck-billed dinosaurs as a group are widely interpreted as social animals, because monodominant bonebeds, trackways and colonial nesting grounds are documented for several hadrosaurid species. The evidence for Gryposaurus notabilis specifically is thinner: the species is known from several skeletons in the same formation, but not from a large mass-death assemblage that would clearly demonstrate herding. The arched snout is interpreted as a visual signalling structure, which itself implies regular contact between individuals. The picture of a herding animal is therefore plausible but unproven.
The name Gryposaurus comes from the Greek grypos, meaning 'hook-nosed' or 'curved', a direct reference to the arched snout.
The hump was built from the nasal bones and most likely served for display — species recognition or mate attraction — and may have supported inflatable soft tissue, though no fossil confirms that.
Its dental battery held hundreds of interlocking teeth that were continuously replaced as they wore down.
Skin impressions linked to Gryposaurus are among the best preserved of any duck-billed dinosaur and show several distinct scale types on a single animal.
For much of the twentieth century many palaeontologists treated Gryposaurus as the same animal as Kritosaurus; the genus was firmly re-established in the 1990s.
The type skull was collected in 1913 along the Red Deer River in Alberta by George F. Sternberg and described the following year by Lawrence Lambe.
Its fossils come from Dinosaur Provincial Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the richest dinosaur localities on Earth.
Gryposaurus could probably browse on all fours and shift onto its hind legs to move faster.
Chapter • Scientific place
Vertebrate Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology, University of Alberta
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Detailed anatomical description of Gryposaurus notabilis (AMNH 5350) from the Dinosaur Park Formation together with a full taxonomic revision of the genus, serving as the general overview source.
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Detailed anatomical description of Gryposaurus notabilis (AMNH 5350) from the Dinosaur Park Formation together with a full taxonomic revision of the genus, serving as the general overview source.
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Detailed anatomical description of Gryposaurus notabilis (AMNH 5350) from the Dinosaur Park Formation together with a full taxonomic revision of the genus, serving as the general overview source.
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Detailed anatomical description of Gryposaurus notabilis (AMNH 5350) from the Dinosaur Park Formation together with a full taxonomic revision of the genus, serving as the general overview source.
Open sourceSedimentary Geology (Elsevier)
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Reconstructs the meandering fluvial and coastal-plain depositional environments of the Dinosaur Park Formation that formed the habitat of Gryposaurus notabilis.
Open sourceProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Dental microwear evidence establishing the herbivorous, plant-grinding feeding mechanism of hadrosaurid dinosaurs such as Gryposaurus.
Open sourcewww.researchgate.net
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
VERIFY:length_max_m: stored=9 suggested=8 confidence=medium — Bertozzo et al. (2017) recalculated MSNM V345 — one of the largest known G. notabilis individuals, with a skull among the largest for the genus — at an overall length of 800 cm in neutral pose, so 9 m exceeds the maximum currently supported for this species. The same study gives a hip height of 315 cm, consistent with the stored height range.
Open sourceZoological Journal of the Linnean Society
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Peer-reviewed cladistic analysis that places Gryposaurus within Hadrosauridae: Saurolophinae (Kritosaurus–Gryposaurus–Secernosaurus clade), supporting the stored Ornithischia–Ornithopoda–Iguanodontia–Hadrosauroidea–Hadrosauridae–Saurolophinae lineage.
Open sourcePalaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (Elsevier)
Reviewed: 9/8/2026
Documents the stratigraphic and geographic ranges of megaherbivorous dinosaurs, including Gryposaurus notabilis, through the upper Campanian Dinosaur Park Formation of southern Alberta.
Open source